Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practicing Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

That’s funny. I already wrote a blog and thought I had posted it, but for some reason it didn’t go through. So, the last post won’t make any sense. Here’s what should have come first.

I’m fasting today to honor Nasrin Sotoudeh, the heroic human rights lawyer imprisoned by the Iranian government for her willingness to take on human rights and political cases, ended a life-threatening hunger strike. The authorities finally capitulated to international demands that the government stop punishing her family, specifically, in this case, her 12 year-old daughter, who had been prohibited from traveling until today.

Today Nasrin will begin to take sustenance again, and she will live. But she still remains unjustly and inhumanely imprisoned. I will deny myself food today, as she has done for the past 49 days, in personal protest against the Iranian government’s cruel treatment of this noble hero. Won’t you join me and fast to demonstrate your solidarity with Nasrin?

Right, so today is International Women’s Day and all over the country and the world women stood on bridges to celebrate. Nice symbolism. Bridges lead from one place to another. They unite places otherwise separated and bring people together.

Think about it, though. For all our progress–some might even say because of our progress–women seem to be standing on some pretty shaky bridges these days. Yes it’s lovely that the Secretary of State is a woman and I do like Ms. Clinton but wish it were possible that we could call her Ms. Rodham. Remember how she had to change her name to make conservative politicos in both parties comfortable enough to vote for her HUSBAND? She had to do that not so she could get elected, but rather so HE could, and so that she might snug into the quaint and mostly decorative “First Lady” role. This the voters demanded, apparently.

And look, now, after we thought we were done, at least for a while, with that demented, logic- and syntax-challenged, gun-toting white wacko who calls herself “feminist” while training her rifle’s cross-hairs on democratically elected politicians who support all women’s right to sovereignty over their bodies, we’re suddenly beset with a radical extremist Christian who is going around the country spreading hatred for Muslims. Have you tuned into Brigitte Gabriel yet? Apparently she grew up in Lebanon and lived in Israel for a spell yet typically greets her audiences by screaming “Yee-Haw!” into the microphone. Then she launches into a well-rehearsed rant against Muslims who, she says in an all-capitals sort of way, are TAKING OVER THE COUNTRY and INFILTRATING AT EVERY LEVEL OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE:

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

“I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five (people) that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department”

You guessed Joe McCarthy, right? Right. This woman draws enormous crowds of fawning American Islamophobics, who write letters to her such as the following, which her organization, Act! for America sponsors on its website:

Now you are doing the right things to help this once great country try to regain it’s center. You are an awesome individual with such a sincere heart. And that brain of yours. You always know just what to say.

First of all, the proper punctuation of the possessive “it” is “its” not the “it’s,” which is a contraction of the verb “to be.” Not clear whether this grammar problem stems from Act! for America or from the enthusiast who is awed by Brigitte’s brain. In either case the quotation doesn’t convey a strong sense of intelligence and education. Here’s more testimony from a loyal follower, who wrote this on ‘The Tea Party Platform“:

It was a distinct privilege to be among those at the Faith Bible Church in Arvada, CO on August 10, 2010 to listen to Brigette Gabriel. It was an honor to later have the opportunity to meet her. I walked away from that meeting with far more than her book,They Must Be Stopped, her 55 minute DVD and a lapel pin. I walked away with a sense of urgency that should be felt by every American who wishes to preserve his/her way of life.

This follower explicitly stated that Gabriel preaches the following points:

The single goal of muslims is to replace our republic with a government based upon islam. Their goal is islamic control.

There are a large number of active terror cells in this country already in place. Some cities have a large number of active members. Among those cities is my home, Denver.

By the way, Brigitte changed her name, too. It seems “Nour Saman,” her real name, was way too Ay-rab for her radical Christian and right-wing Jewish audiences. (Why the Aryan ‘Brigitte’?) And let’s take a look at her erudition.

Willing to bet that these audiences would characterize the following statement, which Brigitte allegedly made, as “just what to say”?

The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil [applause]…. this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no SOUL !, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah” which is very different from the God we believe….[applause] because our God is the God of love.

Oy, vey! This hits on so many levels of “what not to say” that even my Republican grandfather, who rolled over in his grave the day I applied to work for Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA), must be kicking the sides of his coffin. You don’t go around saying that some human beings who name their higher power with a different name than you do have “no soul” unless you’re trying to dehumanize them. And we all know that dehumanized “things” are lot easier to kill than human beings. There is “our God” who is the god of love and “their God” who is the god of hatred and therefore “our God” won’t mind if we exterminate them. All in the name of love, of course.

there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies – blackened babies babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition – tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.

This woman, who has been accused of defending this holocaust of innocent Muslim women and children, thrills American women and American men, with statements such as:

Has this woman heard of Indonesia? Does she know any American Muslims? Does she really want me to believe that the lovely Indian woman I recently met, a physician in her 70s, a volunteer, like me, at the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, and a Muslim, is a radical?

Muslims who believe that the Koran is the word of God and who believe that Mohammed is the perfect man do not share my beliefs but that does not make them radicals Muslims. A Christian or Jew (or Buddhist or Jain, for that matter) who is so intolerant as to equate all Muslims with murderous terrorists does, however, fall into the category of “extremist” in my book.

Particularly when that woman encourages Americans–who are raving mad for her–to consider all Muslims “soulless” beings. The name of her book, “Because they Hate,” more accurately describes her followers than the people she’s going around denouncing.

For International Women’s Day some Pittsburghers stood on a bridge to draw attention to the plight of Afghan Women, who happen to be Muslim and therefore members of the same “soulless” zombies that Brigitte Gabriel is urging Americans to hate and fear.

We’re standing on some shaky bridges–and women like Brigitte Gabriel and her followers are working hard to undermine them completely. How should we understand such extremism? Doris Lessing, who almost always builds bridges, has this to say in Prisons We Choose to Live Inside:

Anyone who reads history at all knows that the passionate and powerful convictions of one century usually seem absurd, extraordinary, to the next. There is no epoch in history that seems to us as it must have to the people who lived through it. What we live through, in any age, is the effect on us of mass emotions and of social conditions from which it almost impossible to detach ourselves. Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, “How could they have believed that?” because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history. To coin a phrase (8).

The very same people running wildly after Brigitte Gabriel today will probably disown her in the future. But for now, they have caught the fever, the mass emotions of suspicion and fear and xenophobia that afflict so many Islamophobic American men and women today. It would be nice if these extremists would stop building bombs under the bridges, these way-stations between groups of human beings who are different from one another, people who might actually like to get to know each other and who would surely get along better if they had ways to reach one another.

I’m really glad to know that there are readers of this blog, but I am disappointed in one or more of you. One of you has gone running to someone else at my yoga studio–never named here–to complain that I have written “disturbing things.” The person who received this complaint then had the nerve to tell me that I should “watch what I say” in my blog.

It is not as though this person possesses the authority, institutional, moral or otherwise, to tell me what I may or may not post here.

It was irritating enough that this person felt empowered to do so. More annoying was that he or she had not even bothered to read it, and had essentially agreed to carry out the malicious intentions of the coward who wanted to shut me up in the first place.

Had he or she actually investigated my blog, he or she would no doubt have been as hard-pressed as I am to discern what elements of which postings are “disturbing” enough to be censored.

I haven’t attacked anyone’s character. I haven’t named any names, except to praise teachers who, in any case, are already well-known and well-praised. What I have done is chronicle my journey through 100 classes of bikram yoga in so many days. I have discussed poses I find difficult and described what I have enjoyed about the practice. I have commented on my own weak, petty, and competitive thoughts, and attempted to think through them to stronger, more generous behaviors. I will continue to do so.

Most of the people I have met at the studio are wonderful, warm, open-hearted and humble. Every one of them possesses a unique set of skills, strengths, and capabilities. I like it that not everyone in the room is young, toned, and thin, and I love the genuine friendliness of the people who are young, toned, and thin, to those of us who don’t look quite as beautiful as we once did. I feel lucky and happy to join all the people I’ve met in this studio–the young and the old, the blubbery and the skeletal, the limber and the stiff, the serious yoginis and occasional passers-through, in my practice every day. I’m frankly shocked to know that one of them slandered me behind my back.

I don’t write this blog to please anyone but myself. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. If you insist on tormenting yourself, then at least have the decency to comment, publicly or privately, on what you find “disturbing” here. Have the courage to take responsibility for your response, however negative, to my writing.

There is a lot that is right about Tony Porter’s “A Call to Men” speech, also a lot that is wrong. See also the website. What is right is the message that normative masculinity is rigidly identified with violence and domination and masculinist oppression, Normative masculine men are fundamentally insecure and spend their whole lives proving that they are “men” by punishing, persecuting, and shaming others who appear to be “less masculine” than the most violent and powerful.

I like what he says. I preach what he preaches. I want my son to hear this. But I’m bothered by the racial undertones. How do you respond to them? Did you notice them? Did they bother you? Do you know why? I’m trying to figure out why they bother me. ESPECIALLY because I like the message.

What creeps me out is that the deliverer, the prophet, is preaching to mostly white women of a certain class. It’s called “A Call to MEN” and here’s this black guy calling to an audience of mostly white women. The camera searches and searches for the random dark-skinned women, as though to say—“see! he appeals to black women! we can prove it!” What’s up with that?

Alas, he corresponds in some ways to racist stereotypes that liberals have. We aren’t a bit surprised to find out that he grew up in the “tenements” of New York City, since, after all….he’s Black, and that’s a romantic image for us Northerners, in a sexy West Side Story way. But also he’s astute, and right (as in correct, as in just) and he is in fact delivering the truth about gender relations. He’s a boundary-transgressing animal. He makes us uncomfortable.

His message about gender may be a truth that has been obvious to you since you were born, or maybe only after a revelation, in a college film class, for example. You got a dose of “good news” which meant not “the news that Christ was born,” but rather, “a refreshing dose of rationality in a sea of violently emotional and sometimes frighteningly violent thinking, a.k.a. the Truth, or its closest approximation so far.

News. He spreads it. It is good. But the context in which he dispenses (his seed?) troubles me. The gender relations of this gender-conscious video bother me, actually, much, much more than its race relations. I thought I was going to see a rally from a man to men, some kind of masculinist ideology-fest at which men were reinforcing with one another, muscling themselves up in defense against the feminizing threat of wimpy-ness or small-penis-nes. So I tuned in. It sounded fun. But what I got was this quite different animal.

What do you think about it? Can we talk about race here? Does the race problem cancel out the feminist message? Do you think it is important to talk about race and gender at the same time? I do.

I mean, surely that was one of the greatest things that our president did for the nationwas to talk about race relations (A More Perfect Union), which have been brutal, indecent, and hard to comprehend, in our country since its founding.

The Europeans who landed here, in search of gold and slaves, neither of which they found, slaughtered thousands of natives deliberately, with swords, and by accident, with disease, in the 1500s. So we Americans were founded in violence, pestilence, and fear. And greed. Yes, also in hope, in a search for freedom from interference by other people with whom we don’t agree. But that quite liberal inclination to seek liberty was not strong in the first settlers who got themselves established here–they were much more repressive and intolerant than most Americans learn. With the goodwives looking on approvingly, the venerable Fathers of Massachusetts burned people at the stake. They whipped Quaker women naked down the streets; they tarred and feathered; they ostracized; they publicly humiliated.

Not all the European invaders were English or Protestant, of course. They were far more diverse than most seem to know. They were Dutch; they were Swedish; they were French; they were Spanish. They were also Natives of that continent, whose ancestors wandered, we think, from the Bering Strait. They were Asian but also maybe Russian and Sami, too. When you start moving back, you realize there is no single blood line, no such thing as a “pure” race; no such thing as race. No such thing as native.

Our family history is rich and complicated. But violent.

Here’s the problem: The”democratic spirit,” the spirit for freedom, seems to have gotten tangled up with the spirit for imprisonment. It seems to have gotten involved with bizarre theocratic notions of American male supremacy, of Judeo-Christian mythology about Adam and Eve; and religious intolerance. You think we’ve evolved? Today’s Puritans have no compunction about compelling their fellow citizens to accept major infringements of their civil liberties without a whimper. These people who use “freedom” like a weapon, a blasphemy, these people who claim to be the “moral majority,” who want to put women back into the kitchen and the kindergarten, these “men’s rights” groups and “white rights” groups, these devils who claim to be angels, …THESE are the people who have mastered the game of self-representation, of marketing, of selling the soul, selling the SELF, self above all, in our country? These people who want to give the top 2 percent of the population the greatest tax benefit? How did they sell that one? Why are still selling it?

We’re the center of capitalism, why has the left let the right control this market? We live here, too. We, too, know how to sell the self to get ahead. We’re just as good, we think, at the game. Except we’re not. We’re not making any progress lately. What is wrong with us?

It’s the age of the internet; yet people are lazy. They mostly want to be fed. So. FEED THEM. Get the slogans out there; advertise, throw all your creativity into the project. OUT PERFORM them. What has gone wrong? Are we stuck in the 18th century? Don’t we know how to sell knowledge?

Don’t get me wrong. I admire the President. It matters that we finally elected a man who defines himself as a Black man. And he is a great man, a well-educated man, an eloquent man, a philosopher, an intellectual (he’s practically French–he’s our Jefferson!). He’s thoughtful. He’s a feminist. He’s by all accounts enlightened in his views about women, race, class, ethnicity. He gets an A plus for human rights. He won the Nobel Prize.

I like him. But why isn’t he standing up against intolerance and bigotry with greater strength? What, in fact, is the difference between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims? None that I can see.

What is good, in Barak and in Tony, is the turn towards the light, the truth.

Too many people seem to think is that the truth is fixed. Therefore. once they find what they think it is, they freeze it in time, and won’t let it move or change with the flow of history and events. We call these people fundamentalists.

But really the truth is not fixed. It is continually in flux, like an amoeba or an energy. It is always changing in response to historical events taking place in a specific environment. These might be events that have uncertain and potentially cataclysmic, world-altering consequences. Like, for example, if Ahmadinajhad and his cronies were to get possession of the nuclear bomb and to set it off. World-altering. But who would you fear more? I’m-a-dinner-jacket or Rick Santorum? Mike Huckabee? Mitt Romney? Re-read The Handmaid’s Tale. Say hello to our possible future. We have to overcome our unwillingness to embrace the product, to sell “the truth.” We need positive slogans.

Or do we? We can’t predict events. But we can predict the way that we respond to them. Do we escalate the violence? Or do we master ourselves? Could we ever really master ourselves as long as we were trying to dominate an Other? Isn’t this the message and the method?

The people in this cartoon are “doing gender.” What does this mean? What is gender?

Gender is an embodied social program, an ideological construction of the body that we do not simply perform in language and gesture,

but also inhabit and experience somatically (from the Greek, soma), in the body .

Gender is durable, although not inevitable, because it is produced and reproduced through symbolic and physical violence that privileges a purely relational, yet rigid, conception of masculinity that is sustained over against rigid conceptions of femininity.

The privileging of masculinity over femininity is wholly arbitrary–it makes no sense and might just as easily have been reversed, had certain factors in our history been different.

The patterns according to which we have interpreted our anatomies and behaviors come from culture, not nature. Gender is a historically constructed way of responding to biology, sure. But it is also a historically determined way of responding to established practices of culture.

Historians and evolutionary psychologist believe that the invention of agriculture made an enormous impact on the way that human beings think about masculinity and femininity. See, for example, the work of Christopher Ryan.

Gender is enforced and reinforced through symbolic and physical violence. We all undergo a certain degree of symbolic violence, and we experience it directly whenever we “apply categories constructed from the point of view of the dominant to the relations of domination, thus making them appear to be natural,” as Pierre Bourdieu explains in his stellar book, Masculine Domination (p. 35).

So, for example, when women view themselves through the constructed categories of ideal femininity in, say, women’s magazines, and perceive themselves to be hideously fat and unattractive because they do not have the elongated and emaciated bodies of the models featured there, then they are experiencing symbolic violence.

Or, when we learn, from our parents, our media, our teachers, civic leaders, and preachers, that women are less able to do math or philosophy or auto mechanics or law than men, and unconsciously choose believe these fictions, and make choices in our lives because we have accepted them, then are experiencing symbolic violence.

We see ourselves through the categories that are present in our culture. And because our culture is patriarchal, organized according to a scheme of perceptions in which things masculine are considered to be higher or better than things feminine, the categories (for example, categories of the perfect female body) through which we see ourselves are also the expression of that patriarchal order.

When we see ourselves according to these paradigmatic ways of understanding “woman,” we are victims of symbolic violence. The culture doesn’t need to beat us up–we do it do ourselves every time we compare ourselves to these idealized images of starvation or hyperbolic nymphomania and find ourselves wanting. We learn to think about ourselves as second, less important than men. We also learn to fear that if we do not look as though we are continually hungering for men, that they will not want us.

This, of course, is complete rubbish, since no one but an absolute ass wants someone around who slavishly caters to their idiotic desires. And yet there are so many men who can’t seem to stand women who assert themselves, and so many women who slavishly cater, or who spend inordinate amounts of time preparing themselves to be the objects of men’s desires, and little or no time thinking about what their own desires really are. There are also plenty of men who can’t seem to imagine that women have any legitimate desires whatsoever.

Gender works through a series of oppositions. Men know themselves as “men” only insofar as they can declare or prove that they are not “unmen” or women. Over against a denigrated Other, men set themselves up as men, as subject, as powerful, right. Just as light knows itself to be light only in contrast to darkness, so masculinity is defined over against femininity. There is no such thing as absolute masculinity or essential masculinity, just as there is no such thing as absolute or essential darkness, or absolute “down” that exists in and of itself without the concept of “up.” Similarly, men habitually define themselves as men only in opposition to women.

But instead of understanding a reciprocal or equal relationship between men and women, we tend to set ourselves into hierarchical relationships. That is, we understand gender as an order in which masculine always takes precedence over feminine. But this doesn’t make any sense. There is a reciprocal relationship between up and down, or hot and cold, or dry and wet. You cannot think one term without the other. That understanding makes it possible for you to see both ideas as concepts, mutually determining ideas, but not as a hierarchy.

(every wonder why the light half is usually on top?)

Yet we generally do not understand these sexual oppositions as mutually dependent and equivalent, but rather as a superior-inferior relationship, in which masculinity is always superior to femininity, always “above” that which is “below” it. This is false thinking, an illusion of reality that has been enforced by symbolic and real violence. Women who have defied it have been punished, branded as whores or sluts or witches or monsters or hags. They have also been subjected to physical punishment, to beatings and rapes and mutilations and murders. Think of Anne Hutchinson,

or wise women, or people you may know of extraordinary autonomy and intransigence who, because they have refused to play the part of the “good” woman within the patriarchal order, have been slapped down or destroyed.